second story of their home and where we sat for hours until we were able to have a boat come out and take us out of the second story window to rescue us. so we've lost everything. >> it is heartbreaking. south carolina department of transportation forced to shut down a 75 mile stretch of i-95. you're looking at live pictures. this is where i-95 meets i-26. this is right before the road is closed. you see it there. i-95 one of the busiest highways in the country stretching from maine to florida. will be already declaring a state of emergency in the state, people being encouraged to stay indoors if they're in a safe and dry place. but some people are risking everything to help others. i want you to take a look at this. this is a human chain that is formed to help this man clinging to a stop sign.

we have live team coverage of the flooding. boris sanchez is in south carolina. nick, let's start off but. first, you have been driving across the state for the past few hours. describe what you've seen. >> reporter: the most traumatic image that we've seen in our travels. you can see behind me images speaking 1,000 words. the cars completely understand water, the building behind me used to be a title max becoming part of the road i way here. this is a result of the relentless rain that just persists, that has not stopped over the last course of the 48 hours. a lot of residents coming out to see exactly what the situation is about. let's bring in local residents here. bob and megan, your daughter, you live close by. are you doing all right?

>> yeah, we're doing fine. we live up the hill here. we just came out to check out the scene. it's a tough one. >> have you ever seen anything like this? this is a pretty serious situation that we're looking at. >> not around here. a bunch of our neighbors just got rescued by a boat. it's pretty bad. we came out to check it all out. everything around here is new, just rebuilt. and so it will do a lot more damage. >> absolutely. what keechd ind of precautions u taking? >> well, again, we live on top of the hill, so we've been very careful. our alarms went off all during the night last night. so obviously we're staying out of the water and not driving or anything like that. we walk down here. we own a restaurant in town and we haven't gone mere near it. >> and this is happening in your hometown, in your home. what goes through your himind wn you look at this behind us?

>> it's sad. there will be a lot of money put into this and it's sad. i hope that no one is hurt too much by this, but we'll be able to make it through. >> the crazy thing about it, this is all new construction. jersey mike's just remodeled and opened up a couple months ago. but what is crazy, there are a lot of houses that way that are under water. >> yeah, and that's what we're hearing that from a lotis an ap over here and some are stranded in that complex trying to get out. and you heard about their neighbors being taken out by boat. very serious situation here for the city of columbia. many neighborhoods across the state of south carolina, they look the same. federal disaster declaration declared by president obama. we're expecting to to hear frome governor any moment now.

she doesn't want people to come out of their house, any unnecessary rescues to take place. we understand they're bringing in emergency response teams from neighboring states including tennessee. let me step away here. these images are just striking. >> take us through that. what are we seeing here? i know that they said that they live on hire grougher ground, b can't get to the restaurant that they open. that look like the downtown area and a ton of shops there now just flooded. >> reporter: sure. from what we understand, we just got here in the last several minute, but this is one of the lowest lying areas in columbia. we started to notice the flooding about six miles outside of the capital when we saw rivers swell. we saw tractor trailers digging out big vehicles from the swelled rivers. we noticed down power lines, lots of power outages.

you guys are local residents. are you affected at all by this? how are you doing? >> i woke up this morning and we don't have no water. the power is doing a flicker deal. and we are probably mowfour mil back. but the apartment complex, kaufman road is closed. they said it looks just like this. >> what are you to go, you don't have any water, no power? >> well, we have power.you to g have any water, no power? >> well, we have power. we just don't have any running water. but thank god we have a lot of bottled water and things and food and stuff for weeks. >> so this is your hometown, is that right? >> yes, sir. >> and you look at this, i mean just turn around with me, stare at this with me. what goes through your mind? >> what goes through my mind -- >> in time. in time. >> this is probably the worst water disaster we've had.

>> you're talking about hurricane hugo. >> yeah. i was four years old. from listening to my elders talking about it, my mom told me this morning this is probably one of the worst ones we've seen. >> well, you take good care of yourself. thank you very much for taking the time with cnn. you see lots of residents, several more behind me taking coming out and taking photos. they can't believe their eyes this damage. our jaws dropped. this is a very viking image behind me. and we hope everyone got out in time. and that there is no one injured. >> the people you've talked to, it seemed that they were prepared, they have food and bottled water. but still looked like they were rather stunned when they saw the kind of water and those businesses that are under water now. nick, appreciate it. want to bring in tom sadr in the cnn weather center.

you and i talked about this earlier today. you described it at catastrophic and that's not a word that we toss around likely here. south carolina now seeing 24 inches in some places and it's still raining. >> the residents of south carolina are living throughage experience the likes of this never seen. we're talking about a one in 500 year event. over three months of rain in three days. from over 16 of the charleston airport to over 2 feet at mount pleasant and it's still coming down in some areas. the rainfall estimates as far as what has fallen in the last three days, notice the color of purple here, that is 10, 20 inches of rain. and we're starting to see the waters recede in charleston. but this is a 36 hour radar. this plume of moisture was forecast to move in on wednesday. thank goodness on wednesday the forecast changed for hurricane joaquin not to move into the carolinas. this would have been a super bowl sandy. but we're starting now to see the eastern edge lift. that's not all good news in areas of red.

just south of myrtle beach, georgetown completely submerged. they have been pumping the water back out into the ocean, but an hour ago was high tide. too many water rescues to count right now. five fatalities mainly due to traffic accidents. they're now calling in crews from tennessee because they're overwhelmed by the number of people who still need help. it is coming down. this stream over to columbia, all the rivers have to flow back toward the ocean. so all the water making its way inland has to come back through. river levels right now are at historic readings. surpassing historic readings. and we still have another 6 possibly localized 10 inches of rain in between charleston and miles per ho myrtle beach to contend with. finally, the area of low

pressure over alabama will slide off the coast. but we still have our hurricane passing just west of bermuda. they can handle that but the number of moisture will now get closer up the beaches of delmarva. so more flooding will take place as the hurricane does slowly find it way away from the u.s. coast. things will improve in the next 24 hours, but still more rain will fall. >> we'll pay attention minute by minute and the governor to speak shortly. thank you very much, tom. and ahead, a life ring from a missing container ship has been found. so the search now is expanding for this ship and the 33 people who are on board. that is the latest from the coast guard. that is up next in a live report.

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press conference to take place.

governor nicky and i wikki hale talking about the state of emergency in her state. we're talking about catastrophic flooding that is occurring and that this is an event that involves thousands of people, emergency rescues and a lot of work ahead as people try to get information and seek shelter and safety. the governor to address the many questions and concerns that people have at this hour just moments away. we'll keep our eye trained on those microphones and bring it to you live as soon as it occurs. we are also following this. the u.s. coast guard and navy now confirming that they have found multiple items today that could possibly belong to the missing u.s. cargo ship including this life ring bearing the name of the ship. a crew member wants to know how did they end up in the path of dangerous storm in the first

place? other family members say they are just simply holding on to hope. >> ain't going to stop looking. just keep it up. >> are you hopeful? >> yeah, yeah. you got to be. it's very stressful, you know. just hoping everything will be better tomorrow. >> we know they will come home safe. they will be safe. >> gabe soma is joining us on the phone. commander, thank you so much for taking the time. we've heard the family members say that they are hope and praying certainly hope and prayer, that's a good thing, but we also want to find that ship and the evidence that we have so far is simply this ring. what do we know more about what potentially is out there on that ship and what does it tell us about the survivors of that ship? >> well, good afternoon. we have six aircraft out there searching. they have been searching throughout the day.

unlike the previous day, today's on-scene weather conditions very favorable for searching. our aircraft has been able to spot debris, some items. >> what have you found? >> in the vicinity of where the ship was last reported, we've also found other items to the theeft of the last noknown position of the ship. and this correlates with what our calculations would indicate where the ship may be. at the same time, this is very much an open and active search and rescue operation. we continue to have good on-scene weather conditions. we are searching for the ship. at the same time, we are searching for life rafts or lifeboats. last night we found the life ring. it does indeed belong to the missing container ship. and we readjusted our drift calculations and continue to

saturate that area to see if we can locate the missing vessel. >> do you have any idea how long it would take before you get to that ship before you get to the critical pieces of evidence in terms of whether or not there are survivors? >> well, i have to stress this is the first good day of searching. right now the on-scene weather conditions are ideal. we have good visibility. in some places 1 to 3 foot seas. just 40 hours ago, we were looking at 30 to 40-foot sea swells. so the search conditions are good and we're finding things in the water. we can cannot confirm whether or not those are items from the missing container ship, however, our searchers from their aircraft are finding things and we are looking for confirm and correlate whether or not that is part of this hunt for tship. >> and are you finding things that give you hope that people have survived, that there are

people out there who can still be rescued? >> so we are locating things like containers, there has been a reported oil sheen. we're working to confirm that. we've had several reports, additionally some reports of life jackets. we do have a coast guard cutter that is in the vicinity working to confirm exactly what these items are. but these are items that are being located by aircraft flying several hundred feet overhead and they are consistent with where we believe the vessel withdrawas more than 72 hours ago when we lost contact. so it is a very concerning situation, however we remain very hopeful that we will continue to search throughout the day and hopefully we can find that ship. >> all right. lieutenant commander, thank you so much. we will try to be optimistic here. clearly these families are frustrated and trying to be patient for 240es answers in terms of their loved ones out there. thank you very much.

coming up, a chilling interview with a survivor of the oregon campus massacre. she is now speaking to cnn sara sidner. >> he had a bulletproof vest on. and he didn't seem like he was like anxious or anything. just seemed like he wanted to do that. and he seemed happy about it. he didn't seamstressed, he didn't seem nervous. but that hasn't stopped me from modeling. my doctor told me about stelara® it helps keep my skin clearer. with only 4 doses a year after 2 starter doses... ...stelara® helps me be in season. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and increase your risk of infections. some serious infections require hospitalization. before starting stelara® your doctor should test for tuberculosis. stelara® may increase your risk of cancer. always tell your doctor if you have any sign of infection, have had cancer, or if you develop any new skin growths. do not take stelara® if you are allergic to stelara® or any of its ingredients. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems. these may be signs of a rare,

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we're hearing directly from a survivor of the oregon campus massac massacre. sara sidner talked with a student who was shot in the hand. sara,s's extra or. i imagine she experienced a lot of trauma in what she went through and the courage that it took her to even talk to you. >> reporter: absolutely. she's a mother of three and she thought she would never see her children again. as the shooter came into her classroom, turns out he was also a student in that very class. she talks about something that we have heard there one other family member of a victim, that he seemed to be singling out or

questioning people about their religion, about whether they were christian or not. and she says not only did he ask if they were christian, but he asked if they were catholics. and it didn't matter their answer, he shot them anyway. >> i don't think he was really targeting them. i honestly don't think he was targeting anybody. he just wanted to do it for fun. because he still shot every single one that he asked. so i don't think he was actually targeting a specific religion. >> because he had started people before even asking. >> before he asked anybody. >> reporter: so you heard her there saying he seemed happy about it. she told us he was giddy, he seemed excited, and he would show no remorse, no mercy whatsoever. she also talked about what happened as she was sitting there in the front of the classroom when he came in, when

he immediately burst in the door, he shot a single warning shot that hit a wall to get everybody's attention. and then he turned his sights on a woman in a wheelchair with a service dog. >> there was a woman in a wheel chair during all this? >> yeah. and she had a dog with her. but the dog was just on the ground. she got off the chair, she went on the ground. and then he told her to get back on the chair. and then she tried to climb back on the chair and he shot her. >> reporter: he shot her argues woman , a woman in a wheelchair. first she obeyed and then he told her to get back in the chair. even though she obeyed his command, he so the hhot her any. and this victim says she was on brutal and intent on doing this, she said she doesn't think anything could have stopped him

but she was there when police ended up shooting him, her face on the ground covered in someone else's blood. she was listening to all this. she's heartbroken for all of the victims and she says she and two other people were the only ones she could see who were able to actually walk out of that classroom. everyone else was either too injured or dead. >> this is just so painful. did the woman in the wheelchair, it she survive, was she one of the survivors? >> reporter: we don't know. she the survivors? >> reporter: we don't know. we asked her and she said i had to lay ted in order to survive this. so her head was on the ground after a point and she tried not to look up because she didn't want the shooter to know that she was still alive.

she was actually expect to go die. she couldn't see what happened to everyone else. when she got up to leave, she ran out into a bathroom where she discovered another gun, started screaming and police came to help her. >> our thoughts and prayers obviously to those families and victims. you can watch more on "new day" tomorrow starting at 6:00 a.m. eastern. you focus on making great burgers, or building the best houses in town. or becoming the next highly-unlikely dotcom superstar. and us, we'll be right there with you, helping with the questions you need answered to get your brand new business started. we're legalzoom and we've already partnered with over a million new business owners to do just that. check us out today to see how you can become one of them. legalzoom. legal help is here. with their airline credit card miles.

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thanks for joining me. i'm suzanne malveaux. any minute we're expecting south carolina governor mickpick nicko speak about the catastrophic flooding in her state. major roads are closed and more rain is on the way. mayor of georgetown telling folks please stay inside. >> just don't be stupid.

that's the thing. keep saying don't try to drive through flooded areas. you don't know how deep they will be. we're supposed to get a lot more rain later today. high tide will be about 4:00. so it could actually be worse in two or three hours. >> our cnn boris sanchez is in georgetown. you spoke with a man trying to rescue animals from a flooded veterinary clinic. how did that turn out? >> reporter: we have good news. first of all, that man actually owns a business here in georgetown on the street which as you can see is totally flooded. it's actually gone up in the past hour, about 30 feet from me. that man owns a business here. he also run as water extraction service and he got a call from a veterinarian that runs a veterinarian hospital in a basement and she was concerned because she knew she had left at least one animal there. and she called him to try to get the water out. we spoke with him and he was

kind of heartfelt because he couldn't get in quick enough to try to help the animals. listen to what he says. >> right now we're at 1,000 gallons and not even touching the top of it. >> and you can hear the animals? >> yes, we can hear the cats. i don't want to walk in the water because we don't know if the power is still on, so we're just pumping. >> we checked in with them again and they were able to get inside and rescue a cat. fortunately the cat is okay. there were no other animals in there. and they took out about 11,000 gallons from inside that brachlt. as you can see around me as i mentioned before, the water continues to rise. that's because there is an inlet just to my left and it's high tide right now. the water will keep rising throughout the rest of the day. a lot of these businesses have already had water pumped out of their shops and they will have to do it again simply because the water hasn't stopped going up. the rain keeps coming down.

the cleanup here likely to extend into the coming weeks. >> boris, good news about the animals there. tell us about the roads. how have the roads been where you've been? >> reporter: extremely difficult to get through. this road for example, you could actually drive through. it's totally under water now. there was a police barricade making people turn away. a lot of the roads are damaged and it's not just that, it's also cars that are submerged, object, rocks just floating around behind me, manhole covers floating around behind me. so it's really not a good idea to be out driving. you heard the mayor earlier asking people to stay inside if they don't have to be outside. it's just -- there are too many questions about what might be in the water and what might be on the road. so again, just a good idea to stay home and hunker down. >> be safe out there. we'll get back to you shortly. tens of thousands who have lost power now since that flooding began and others have had to

scramble to safety as the floodwaters rose. i want to bring in stacy bailey, she lives in charleston in a neighborhood hit hard by the flooding. thank you for joining us by phone. tell us, you have been sending some pretty dramatic pictures, but what has it been like for you? i understand you, your husband, your dog, you've all been trying to get through all of this water, get to safety. what have you experienced? >> well, it's been pretty intense. yesterday morning we woke up pretty quickly at 6:30 a.m. to waist deep water outside. our cars were not parked quite far away enough, so we were struggling where what to do to get the cars out of the floodwaters. our shed in our pack yard had everything floating in it, so we were putting everything in the shed into kayaks to get them on the back deck and try to get them out of the water.

later on in the morning a bunch of our neighbors came out and we all started pushing each other's cars out. actually ended up being quite a meeting moment, getting to meet neighbors we hadn't met before. but it took about six or seven of us to push six or seven cars over to safety. otherwise we've just been trying to hunker todown and hope the te doesn't bring the waters too high. >> are you able to stay in your home or have you had to leave? >> we've been staying in the home mostly so that we could be here in case the water got too high. we're very fortunate it didn't come into the house because our house is lifted a little ways. it came up to probably about waist deep in our front and backyard. so we've been staying here and only leaving when necessary to trudge through the waters to go to the corner store or to get some supplies. >> and i think we're seeing a

picture of your husband with the dog carrying the dog in the water. >> yes. the dog didn't quite know what to do to go to the bathroom. so we had to carry them about a block away to get them to go to the bathroom. there do you have enough food, water, are you good with all set with where you are? >> yeah, we're all set. the water is starting to subside now. both vehicles seem to be working. we were a bit concerned that they may not start back up. we're hoping that the storms that come in this afternoon and evening don't bring the tide and floodwaters too high again. so for now we're good. we might make a run before the rain comes. but at this point, the schools a everything around us are closed to tomorrow. so it may be a work from home monday. >> i imagine so. you say you might make a run.

do you mean like there might be grocery stores that are open that you might be able to walk to or wade to? >> yeah. i think the grocery store around the corner is actually closed, but we have several convenience stores within a few blocks that have been posting on social media that they're open. we walked to one this morning to get some milk. and he said that yesterday he was the only store open in the area and he never stopped. he was full all day with people coming to get all kinds of things. >> all right. well, stacy, please keep us posted. i'm glad you're safe, your husband and your dog. i know it's quite an adjustment for all of you and that it was an opportunity for your neighbors as well to get to know them and help each other out in this time of need. and we really appreciate your talking to us. we're waiting for the governor of south carolina who will be holding a press conference very shortly to give us the very latest. so again, thank you very much. we'll be right back.

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. now to the race for 2016. donald trump says he thinks that the middle east might be better off had saddam hussein and moammar gadhafi stayed in power and that the u.s. should stay out of syria all together. >> and you know what, i'm not saying assad is a good guy because he's probably a bad guy. but i've watched him interviewed many times and you could make the case if you look at libya, look at what we did there. it's a mess.

if you look at saddam hussein with iraq, it's a mess. >> do you think the middle east would be better today gadhafi, s saddam were still there? >> it's not even a contest. isis came out of iraq. >> saddam and gadhafi, you think things would be more stable? >> of course it would be. >> so we want to talk about that. with us, ron bronstein and kimberly dozier. so both of you experts in this field. ron, we have heard this before from people who look at our policies and say that iraq, saddam hussein, moammar gadhafi, that it would have been more stable if we had not gotten

involved. does trump have a point? >> it's coming from an angle with what we hear on including immigration and trade. trump is basically say the world is seen as a dangerous corrupt confusing place where they are always trying to take advantage of us and our interactions with the world on really any front, a wall on immigration, tariffs on trade, suspicion of intervention in foreign conflicts, all of that is dangeroudangerous. >> we'll have to bring you the governor of south carolina nikki haley who has just begun her press conference on the catastrophic flooding occurring in her state. let's listen in. >> thank you very much.

thank you for being here. we have a full team here ready to give you a lot of information right now. this has been the one thing i want people to understand is when you think about what we're sitting in right now, we are at a 1,000 year level of rain in parts of the low country. what does that mean? we haven't seen this level of rain in the low country in 1,000 years. that's how big this is. that's how south carolina is -- what south carolina is dealing with right now. congery river is at its highest level since 1936. that's why we keep telling people stay of on the roadways. but i want to give you as much information as we have. this is all hands on deck, so there is a lot of information. the main thing about what we're dealing with is it is literally changing by the minute. and so we're dealing with those issues as we can. first thing i want to do is turn it over to our climatologist and

let him give you an update and then i'll take it back from there. >> good afternoon. right now we're watching a very persistent plume of moisture coming in off the ocean. this is what has delivered all the rain throughout the evening. we'll continue to see right rain, rain showers throughout the midlands all the way to myrtle beach. there are heavier showers in myrtle beach, but we're expecting them to slowly diminish by midnight tonight. we will maintain the rain showers through monday. however, those will be coming less and less productive as we cao three. we're anticipating another 2 to 6 inches of rain from columbia to myrtle beach. not expecting sunny skies until tuesday. >> thank you.

and so that's the importance. regardless of where you are in the state, continue to stay home, continue to stay off the roadways. what we have right now is just a lot of resources at play. we have 255 active troopers on the road right now. certainly with more available. we have 1,000 d.o.t. maintenance workers that are working every single shift as we go forward. we've got half of our dnr officers activated right now, 320 of our sled officers on standby. we had and really plan to have in terms of sand bags and making sure we had enough of that, we were look at about 200,000 that we had, we've used 30,000 plus up until this time. we had activated 600 of our national guardsmen, we have 500 additional that are immediately availablend and on call and 8, on standby. so the national guard has been on call since thursday. the calls for assistance that we've seen so far have been 754

and that's just in the last 12 hour period. am i right, dr. smith? that we are looking at 323 collisions just in that time frame. we unfortunately have had three fatalities through this weather event so far. and we are looking at swift water rescue teams are really very much at play here. we have eight deployed, receiving four from tennessee, five more on the way. that's something that we're continuing continuing to do going forward. we have 1 1 aircrafts available for aerial rescues. and 106 high water vehicles. so there is a lot of equipment and people and first responders on the roads. that's the reason we need everybody to stay off the roads. other states have been incredibly helpful. i just communicated with governor pat mccory who has basically said he will help in any way that he can from north carolina.

we've already received four national guard helicopters from north carolina, four additional swift water rescue teams from tennessee. the incident management team is on its way from florida. that's been helpful. but the federal resources have been here since thursday and that's been up belienbelievably helpful. we have a federal coordinating officer here on the ground, fema incident management team, swift water rescue teams are coming in from ft. bragg. and we have helicopters on the scene. so our goal is all hands on deck. what we will continue to say is if you are in your house, stay in your house. this is not something to be out taking pictures of. this is not something that you want your kids playing in. the water is not safe. and a lot of areas across the state where you see this deep water, it's got bacteria in it. so stay inside and don't get in there. we've seen areas of the interstate that are right now clear, but they will be a patch where it goes and it gets real deep. you're going to have to turn

away. it's not worth doing. we're in the process of closing all the interstates around the columbia area that is changing let early as we go. it is not good to get outside. we will have another meeting and conference call again at 5:00. i'll be 4heavily encouraging county offices to close tomorrow which automatically we'll suggest that schools close. and the main reason for that is this is not going to clear up until at least tuesday or wednesday. so what we need from a state perspective is give us the space that we need. i need all my first responders on there. i need all of my utility crewmen being able to get through there and get power back on. we need to make sure that we have everybody from d.o.t. able to open those roads or close those roads as needed. i think we have right now we're look at about 25,000 outages. but our utilities have been fantastic at trying to turn that back up. some areas are easier than others, but so much of what we need, this is heavy equipment that is on the roads.

when you look at that -- those high water vehicles, they need to be able to get through in and out. we've worked very closely with lexington county, we know they are going through a lot of issues. absolutely need everybody to stay home. myrtle beach has gone through a terrible time. but this is an incident we've never had before. when we dealt with the two winter storms before, we said this was the first time we have really dealt with that. this is different than a hurricane because it's water and it's slow moving and it's sitting. and we can't just take the water out. so as long as it sits, we just need on did tto do the best we controlling the environment around it. we very much are focused on the maps and the maps we're looking at are the status of the police stations, the fire departments, what the status of schools and hospitals and shelters and nursing homes. very much focused on that.

we know we had roper down a little bit. we got roper hospital back up. but we had one emergency room that is down for contamination. so these things are changing very fluidly. there is an emergency management division office in every county. and so the state officials in those counties going through a hard time, there's constant communication with his building which has every agency there. we're going to continue to do that. i can't stress enough we'll do our part. this is about the citizens of south carolina. stay home. don't get out in it. don't take pictures. watch tv. tv has done a great job of telling what this is. not only that, we have amazing websites that will give you everything. d.o.t. has a fantastic facebook page that shows road closures. public safety talks about the incident. all of it feeds into the emergency management division website which will tell you really in realtime what we're seeing, maps, flooding, what

we're expecting to do and all of those things. the one thing i ask secretary hall to do is take precautions through this entire time. since thursday, it's all about not waiting until something happens, getting in front of it, so we are closing roads. if we think there's going be flooding, we're not going to wait for it to flood. we're closing them. we're doing that proactively to discourage anybody from going that way. i'll reiterate again. i know director smith will do that. is if for any reason you're in your car and you're driving and you see water, turn around, don't drown. that's the one thing they always say because it doesn't matter how much you hit the gas, you're going to get stuck. and to already have three fatalities, that's three too many. it's three people we needed to stay home that didn't. i have a few people that are going to add to what i had to say. we're first going to start off with general livingston. >> thank you, governor. based on the governor's priorities, the national guard and really all state agencies

are supporting county and city efforts throughout the state, focusing on safety issues, rescue operations, evacuations, and detouring the public away from areas of danger. then we're concentrating on preservation of infrastructure and finally we'll turn around and start worrying about restoring infrastructure. if you see a lot of water going by and there's nobody there, that doesn't mean nobody's working. we're over where people are in need. we just completed two aerial rescues in richland and sumter counties. we have high-water vehicles down in sumberton working in georgetown and working down in charleston. and now working in the lessington county area. so if you see an incident, call your county. call 911. and it will go through that county lightning fast and get to those proper resources.

one of the instances in richland county, we had a mother and her child stranded, a rescue worker tried to get to them. he got stranded so we used an aerial rescue to go get all of them and started picking people off rooftops. this system is very immediate. it's very quick. so make sure you keep your counties involved. call that 911. and let us know what's going on out there. and the governor's talking about the websites out there. look at the websites. look at the national guard website. you can see what's going on rather than getting out there and possibly getting yourself in trouble. so we don't want to have to rescue you, too. governor? >> thank you, general. now we're going to turn it over to the director of the emergency management division. >> thank you, governor. our role is to coordinate the state response to emergency situations like that like we're having right now and essentially what that means is we're

providing support to local authorities when they need additional resources and can't respond within their own confines. that's our primary role here right now. we've actually had about 80 requests,filled 10 of them so far. some are pending. a number of state agencies are working on a number of issues to include the swift water rescue teams, high mobility vehicles, feeding, sheltering, pretty much everything we do when we have a disaster situation. we've got personnel from the state emergency management division that are embedded in the counties that are most straugt right now and helps facilitate the requests and make sure we've got an on-the-ground presence to take care of whatever happens down there. we also before the event did a great deal in terms of staging events. staging personnel, rather, and making sure that we could respond quickly because basically that's what we want to

do is once we do get the request, we want to reduce the response time. so, thank you very much. >> i wanted to add something to director stenson's remarks. a lot of this was preplanned as we got the weather reports early on and we started bringing resources in on thursday. we have excess resources waiting for assignments right now, so the resources are there. do not be concerned that we're g going to run out of resources. the governor has done a great job of getting all of us to get ahead of that curve so we are going to be prepared for future missions. so resources are in good shape. thank you. >> thank you, general. and now we'll turn it over to secretary hall of d.o.t. >> thank you, governor. with regards with the transportation network in the state, we have obviously closed

numerous roads and bridges in the state due to flooding issues and concerns about the structural health of our bridges. several of our bridges are under water currently. we have not had the opportunity to review those bridges to determine when and if we can re-open those structures. the charleston area, the georgetown area of the state continue to be hard hit. the midlands area is a focus of ours currently in the state, the columbia area in particular. and basically the p.d. area of the state as well with regards to road and bridge closures. we have several engineers in addition to our maintenance employees that are out on the roads and bridges checking, assessing situations. if there's any doubt whatsoever, we're going to go ahead and close the facility to make sure that safety and public health and life is paramount in this situation and we're not going to risk any loss of live with regards to infrastructure. along those lines, our major

interstate facilities in the state, i-26 at the very end, the charleston area, remains closed at this time. heading into charleston. i-95, the section between florence, all the way down to i-26, is in the process of being closed and rerouted. i-126 heading into downtown columbia, the large bridge there over the broad river, we're closing that as well. and then a section of i-20 around monticello road here in the columbia area has already been closed and we are expecting to need to close portions of i-77, some additional portions of i-26, and additional portions of i-20 in and around the columbia area due to rising water levels and just being able to have people not drive through water and risk any kind of damage. we're continuing to assess blossom and gervais street in

the columbia river down street of the lake murray dam. safety is our top priority. we request unless you absolutely have to for emergency situations, we request there's no travel on the roads at this time. governor? >> thank you, secretary hall. now we'll turn it over to director smith with department of public safety. >> thank you, governor. good afternoon. as our governor mentioned earlier, please stay off the roads. as i said before, that's the best advice that we can give you to stay home and stay off the roads. the governor also mentioned the phrase "turn around, don't drown." we seriously mean that. there are dangers und s underne that standing water. again, downed power lines, tree branches, and dangerous chemicals. we ask that you not use water for recreational purposes. you never know what's in that water. we will continue to work with scdot regarding road closures and diversion routes.

this has been a very tedious process for us because the situations are changing. sometimes right away, immediately. so we're partnering with scdot to make sure the proper precautionary measures are taken to secure those roadways. we will maintain adequate staffing for this event. the governor mentioned earlier we have 2 5 5 dps officers out on the roads now. that number could be increased in event that we need to. working with our state partners, whether it's s.l.e.d., dnr, ppp, we can also tap into that resource to augment our staffing as well. during the operational period from 6:00 p.m. yesterday to 6:00 a.m. this morning, we responded to 754 calls for service. 323 of those calls were collisions. we've had five fatalities since the emergency declaration has

been established. three of the five fatalities were weather-related. down in the summerton area, apartment complex was under water. s.l.e.d. coordinated that event and sent agents and partners to respond to that. 15 s.l.e.d. agents, five ppp agents, seven dnr officers, and two troopers responded to the event to assess. essentially over 300 tenants being evacuated from that complex. with respect to dnr and berkeley, claiidon, lexington counties, they're performing search and rescue missions. basically people are trapped either in homes or cars so whatever it takes, they're there performing those viable search and rescue missions. with respect